RUSH: Thomas B. Edsall is back with a new column at the New York Times. “The Politics of Anything Goes.” What this story is about is Obama seeking to suppress the white, blue-collar vote again. “Barack Obama first captured the national spotlight with a speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston in which he called for an end to the politics of division. The audience roared back its applause at the end of almost every line. … Americans, Obama declared, are ‘one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

“‘In the end, thatÂ’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?’ Now,” writes Thomas B. Edsall, “faced with a tough re-election fight, President Obama has, in fundamental respects, adopted the strategy he denounced eight years ago. He is running a two-track campaign. One track of his re-election drive seeks to boost turnout among core liberal groups; the other aims to suppress turnout and minimize his margin of defeat in the most hostile segment of the electorate, whites without college degrees.”

This is the second Thomas B. Edsall column on this premise.

The first one, again, was November 27th, 2011. In it, Edsall claimed the campaign had written off the non-college degreed white voter. This column is about how Obama’s now gonna try to suppress their vote. Yep. “This approach assumes a highly polarized electorate and tries to make the best of it. On his campaign website, Obama singles out 16 specific target constituencies under ‘groups.’ Some are listed because it would be politically damaging to fail to include them: People of Faith; Veterans and Military Families; Rural Americans; Seniors; and Small Business Owners.”

Look, I could read the whole thing. Here’s all you have to know. Edsall is not criticizing Obama for this. He does point out how it contradicts Obama’s high-minded rhetoric in 2004, 2008. But he says, “Hey, you know, Obama tried to create one America, he tried to unify us, but it didn’t work.” He doesn’t specify why, but sadly, he tried. He tried to be the great unifier, tried to be postpartisan, postracial, post this, but it didn’t work. And so now, since there’s this highly polarized electorate out there, all our precious Obama can do is try to make the best of it.

So, see, it’s not his fault. He wanted to unify everybody, but he didn’t, not his fault, he tried. Now we’ve got this divided electorate, and Obama’s got no choice but to suppress the voters that don’t like him. He’s gotta find a way to demoralize ’em. He’s gotta find a way to make sure that they don’t vote. He’s gotta find a way to make it so that they have no desire to vote. He’s gotta make it appear hopeless. They have to give up. He has to make it appear hopeless that the people who oppose Obama can win. That’s what he has to do. And what does that mean? It means that Obama — and Edsall is fully supportive of this. Obama now, as a campaign tactic, has to go out and try to poison the blue-collar white vote about Romney. And how are they doing that?

Folks, they are spending a fortune trying to convince these people that Romney hates them. They are trying to suppress the non-college educated white vote. They’re trying to convince ’em that Romney hates ’em; that he sneers at ’em; that he looks down his nose at them; that he resents them, hates them; he doesn’t have any use for ’em. That’s the tone of Obama’s campaign where these voters are concerned. He’s trying to take all their hope away. He’s trying to tell them they have no chance. They’re defeated. You may as well not even show up and vote, you don’t have a chance.

That’s quite a leap from November, 2011: Yeah, you know, we’ve lost these people. We’re not gonna campaign. Now we’re gonna do everything we can to depress them. And this is written of as though it’s a brilliant campaign tactic, because it deals with the reality of what is, and Obama is very, very smart to do this. They want you people who are white, who don’t have college degrees, to hate Romney so much that you’ll just stay home, sit on your hands, because you don’t think it’ll matter anyway.